Play This: Project X Zone is one of video gaming’s coolest crossovers, even though the story falls a bit short

With the right characters, crossovers are incredibly exciting. Heck, just look at the success of The Avengers. Or, in terms of games, something like Marvel vs. Capcom. Bringing lots of personalities from different franchises together and having them interact can be a blast for fans, even if the overall story is a little goofy or subpar.

That’s the case with Project X Zone on the Nintendo 3DS. You thought The Avengers had a big cast with its six heroes? Try the over 50 protagonists of Project X Zone, all coming from a multitude of games from some of Japan’s biggest game developers: Namco Bandai, Capcom and Sega.

What does that mean? It means characters from Mega Man X, Street Fighter, Space Channel 5, Dead Rising, Tekken, Virtua Fighter, Devil May Cry, .hack//, Tales of Vesperia, Shining Force and more all bump into each other for totally crazy turn-based strategy gameplay.

As you might expect, the story that tries to justify all of these meet-ups is… less than ideal. In fact, it’s utter nonsense. But how much do you really care? The point is that Frank West, Heihachi, Chris Redfield and Ulala are all in the same game, fighting together with extremely flashy animations. What’s to complain about?

To be clear, though, if you’re not a hardcore fan of at least some of the franchises represented here, there are probably better games you could be spending your time with. Heck, the voices weren’t even dubbed in English — all the spoken words are still in Japanese (with English text), which is probably what really hardcore fans of Japanese games want anyway.

From a pure gameplay standpoint, Fire Emblem: Awakening is a much better turn-based experience on the 3DS. Project X Zone has the basics down, but a lot of the smaller gameplay systems feel like nonsense, aren’t very well explained, and ultimately battles don’t require very deep strategy to master.

It’s not the deepest game or the one that makes the most sense, but as a fan of most of the games and characters represented here, the goofy nature of Project X Zone’s crossover has me grinning a lot. And since it’s portable, it’s really easy to take it with me to play a stage or two on the go (or in bed, as the case often is). Mostly, I’m just really glad it exists and it was released here in America — I can’t imagine licensing all of these characters was the easiest of tasks.

If you’re at all a fan of the source material, there’s probably something for you to like in Project X Zone. I’ve greatly enjoyed my time with it and can’t wait to play more. Everyone else? Ehhh, you could check out the demo, but I’m not sure what would entice you, unless you just like really over-the-top battle animations and simple turn-based strategy.

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